Clean the oil jet for clutch lubrication.

Hey,

Long time lurker, first time poster here. I was desperately trying to find the solution to my clutch pushrod seal leak and was referred to this thread by the superduke forum.

With all of the tips in this thread, I was able to successfully remove the oiler jet for the pushrod (using the flathead screwdriver bit/q-tip approach) and cleaned the jet out with a spot of guitar string and some brake cleaner. Next thing I know, there's no more oil leak behind my slave cylinder! (At least for now.)

From the look of how tiny that hole is, I'm probably going to invest in a bit larger jet, because that thing is so miniscule, it has to be practically useless!

Thanks again!

Now, it's time to ride!
:dllama

The hole actually looks big to me. What size jet is that. If you go too large, you'll have trouble finding neutral when stopped.

More oil = more drag. It's supposed to be miniscule. Ask Boatman about his early '04 with no hole in that jet...works perfect, has for years, he rides the crap out of it.

It's the stock jet from the bike, as far as I know. I didn't look until you mentioned it, but in the crappy pics I have, I spotted a "3" on the top of the jet, so is it safe to assume it's the .3 ?

Either way, the bike shifts normally now and I just re-checked the clutch slave to see if there was any seepage (which it usually does after I park it) and there's no oil to be found.

Happy monkey.

"Velcome aboart" -- and thanks for posting up. You've resurrected an informative thread of which I was unaware.

+1

I feel like I need to bring this one back up...

I started having trouble with clutch drag as well. In order to fix it, I took out the oil jet and I noticed it was either clogged or it was actually a plug (?). Not sure...I used a 0.5 mm drill bit to 'clear and enlarge' the hole anyway.

I checked my clutch slave (triple o-ring Sigutech) while I was at it - no problems observed.

At first the bike worked perfectly fine: shifting in and out of 1st and 2nd gear was smooth as butter, bike did not have the tendency to pull forward with the clutch disengaged, etc. Perfect...al ran fine until the engine got hot and the cooling fan started. At that point, the clutch started to drag again. I let it cool down, and again it's working fine!

I even tried running the bike for a bit with the jet completely removed - bike behaves still the same, horrible clutch drag when hot.

This is especially frustrating as I am at the moment in another country for business reasons and I left my baby suffering alone in my garage back home

I left a bit clueless now, maybe some ideas from more experienced inmates can be of some help. Any idea would be apreciated.

How many miles on the bike? What year?

I know a lot of people have used the .5 mm jet that CJ Designs sells, but when I went to anything larger than the .3 mm oem jet, it put too much oil into the clutch, and would drag horribly when warmed up. I went back to the stock size, and haven't had any issues for the past 25K miles.
If you look closely, you will see that the latest version of the stock oil jet has a convex floor, which makes it much less likely to plug up with debris.

2004 bike, with about 50K km on the clock.

It may be a good idea to try a 0.3mm jet. But still this does not really explain why did I experience the same drag when the jet was blocked.

Have you upgraded to the new clucthrod. It helpled a lot on mine..

I need to check that. I only bought the bike this spring, done some forest road riding back home in Romania a a bigger summer tour in Central Asia. No problems so far, this clutch drag is the first issue I ever saw with it.

Maybe two causes?

I know what they say about coincidences, but the symptoms you described are what comes of having moisture in the fluid. And, when you put it back together with fresh fluid, you had an oversize jet- another possible cause of drag.

Does the drag still happen only when hot?

Like already suggested,,,, make sure it's got the updated pushrod.

Oil jet,,,, mine still has the plugged jet because it was dragging too much when I switched to the updated jet. .5mm is too much oil. Speaking of oil,,, what are you using?

Although your symptoms don't suggest it, I would check the last steel clutch plate at the bottom of the stack. The belville washer it rides against wears a groove into the plate. It's not much of a groove that causes an issue. Swap it for any other steel plate in the stack and see if the dragging stops. It's easy to do and no need to drain the oil. Just remove the outer clutch cover and the pressure plate.

When you first start off for the day, do you get a grabby clutch for the first start off?

I've changed to 0.3mm to 0.5mm oil jet shortly after installing CJ Designs clutch cover.With 0.3mm jet I could hardly see any sign of oil lubrication in the clutch area(jet wasn't blocked) and will never look back.Now I can see a nice oil flow and so far haven't experienced any clutch drag or difficulties in finding neutral in standstill.

I used a Q-tip to pull the jet out of my Adventure today. It works awesome and is a lot faster than taping some hose to your vacuum cleaner. It was nice to clean up the jet and get some oil flowing to the clutch.

Yep, only when hot. Otherwise it's going like knife through butter. Sometimes I even got the impression of 'problem solved' until I ride slow in the city or in the mud, and there it goes again.

I'm using Shell Advance Ultra 4T synt. 15W50, just like the previous owner of the bike. I did an oil change, water pump, forks, bla bla bla service shortly after buying the bike. The oil is 5000-5500km old now. Getting close to the next required oil change, maybe this could be another cause?

Grabby clutch at start, hmmm...no, not really. Or at least I did not notice.

Anyway, seems I have a loong weekend ahead of me when I get back to the garage.

Was just curious about the oil as I've had a couple oils give clutch related "issues". No experience with the Shell you are using.

The grooved steel plate I mentioned usually shows initially as a grabby clutch at start up. So I don't think this is your problem but if you have the clutch apart it's some thing to check. And if it has the updated pushrod.

Personally,,,, I would change the oil (different oil) and see if the issue goes away.